The study of Portugal takes on a new dignity and importance when we reflect that she has given language, institutions, and laws to half of South America and to a population that already outnumbers her own four to one. She is entitled to the interest of the world if only because she has placed her indelible imprint on a region which is as large as Europe and as fertile as Java, and which is destined within the next two centuries to support the largest population of any of the great political divisions of the globe. In the twelfth century, the coalescence of a fragment of the kingdom of Leon with the Moorish territory near the mouth of the Tagus originated Portugal as a separate country. The race was very mixed. Its principal elements were the Leonese and the Mosarabes--the latter being the Christians of Moorish Portugal left undisturbed from Visigothic times by their tolerant Mohammedan conquerors. Each of these elements was, in its turn, of mixed origin. To the original Iberian population, which had occupied the Peninsula two thousand years before the Christian era, had been successively added Phenicians, Greeks, Celts, Ligurians, Carthaginians, Latins,--and in Roman times,--officials, soldiers, and slaves from all over the empire, including many Jews. The long Roman dominion welded all these together into a homogeneous mass. Later, the Visigothic conquest added a large Teutonic contingent, which is especially evident in northern and Leonese Portugal. Still later, the Saracens intermarried in considerable numbers with the Mosarabes of southern Portugal. After the formation of the modern kingdom, another element was added in the French, Provencals, Flemings, and English who came in large numbers to aid in the final expulsion of the Moors. By the end of the fourteenth century, the Portuguese had become a distinct nation. Racial and religious tolerance were more advanced than in the rest of Europe; self-governing municipalities covered the greatest part of the country, each privileged within a definite territory. The nobles, prelates, and monastic and military orders were still privileged, and their property was not subject to tribute, but their power was not predominant. The king was chief of the army and the proprietor of a very considerable proportion of the land, but he was under constant pressure to grant it to the religious orders and to the nobles. The people were everywhere heavily taxed--in the municipalities and Crown lands by the king, and on the estates of the privileged orders for the benefit of their great proprietors. The nobles were under no enforceable obligation to perform military service. A great general deliberative and representative assembly--the Cortes--had come into being when the monarchy was founded. It included representatives of the municipalities as well as nobles and clergy, and its importance and vitality are shown by the fact that from 1250 to 1376 it met twenty-five times. By the